Bell and Howell Revolutionizes Field Service Delivery with Progress

Award-winning service organization uses Progress Kinvey high-productivity application platform to mobile-enable field service delivery and reduce SAP data access time to milliseconds

Progress PRGS, the leading provider of application development and digital experience technologies, today announced that Bell and Howell, a leading next-generation services and solutions organization, has leveraged the Progress® Kinvey™ high-productivity application platform to launch a new mobile app for field service technicians to easily access large SAP data sets to deliver the high speed, performance and accuracy of information its mobile workforce requires.

Boasting a rich history and expertise in mechatronics and workflow efficiency, Bell and Howell delivers comprehensive automation solutions in retail click-and-collect, pharmaceutical factory intelligence, production mail, consumer packaging automation and omnichannel communication. With more than 700 service personnel deployed throughout North America and Canada, field productivity is critical to their success.

Bell and Howell was an early leader in mobile app development, launching its first mobile app in 2004. However, as the mobile landscape has evolved, the company quickly realized that it not only needed to update its mobile app to better enable its field technicians, but had to build out an application infrastructure that would enable users to access the data in its SAP systems quickly and easily.

To make this vision a reality, Bell and Howell turned to Progress and its high-productivity application platform, Kinvey, to provide cost-effective, zero-code, configurable integration to SAP as part of its full-featured mobile application-development platform. With Progress, Bell and Howell has launched a modern, efficient mobile service application and dramatically reduced SAP data access response time from tens of seconds to milliseconds. The new application platform has also helped the company increase the speed at which its technicians can communicate and connect with other backend systems, call centers and customers.

"In order to maintain our reputation as an industry-leading field service organization, we selected Progress Kinvey to deliver faster field access to our data-rich SAP systems," said Jim Feely, SVP Global Business Services, Bell and Howell. "With the new mobile field service app, our technicians are working much more effectively and efficiently."

Through the new field service mobile app technicians can view the history of a machine, share information and images, scan parts, create and view slow-motion videos, and – most importantly – capture true parts history. They can also process service transactions and respond quickly to customer requests while providing back-office operations with insight on service delivery and productivity. Additional benefits include the ability to determine precisely how many hours or cycles a part has been in use and whether multiple technicians have encountered the same or similar issues. Based on that data, the company can take preemptive action to replace a part before it fails. The app also helps with product tracking – locating parts in stock at other locations to streamline the ordering and delivery process.

"Field technicians are on the front lines – their effectiveness impacts the customer experience and the value the customer gets from the company's products," said Dmitri Tcherevik, Chief Technology Officer, Progress. "With Progress Kinvey high-productivity application platform, Bell and Howell is revolutionizing the value they deliver to customers, and the efficiency with which their field teams work."

For more information about Progress Kinvey, please click here.

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About Progress
Progress PRGS offers the leading platform for developing and deploying strategic business applications. We enable customers and partners to deliver modern, high-impact digital experiences with a fraction of the effort, time and cost. Progress offers powerful tools for easily building adaptive user experiences across any type of device or touchpoint, award-winning machine learning that enables cognitive capabilities to be a part of any application, the flexibility of a serverless cloud to deploy modern apps, business rules, web content management, plus leading data connectivity technology. Over 1,700 independent software vendors, 100,000 enterprise customers, and two million developers rely on Progress to power their applications. Learn about Progress at www.progress.com or +1-800-477-6473.

Progress and Kinvey are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation and/or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the US and other countries. Any other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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